Sustainability Indicators: Measuring the Immeasurable?

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Praise for the first edition:

'This book should be of interest to anyone interested in sustainable development, and especially sustainability indicators. Bell and Morse easily succeed in exposing the fundamental paradoxes of these concepts and, more importantly, they offer us a way forward. Readers ... will find their practical recommendations for those attempting to do sustainability analysis in the field most welcome, which is also the book's greatest strength.'
Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

'This book makes a valuable contribution to the theory and practice of using indicators for sustainability. It introduces systems ideas and a range of tools and techniques that have the potential to broaden and deepen our understanding of a whole range of complex situations. Well worth a closer look.'
Christine Blackmore, Open University

'This is a book that explores new ways of thinking about how to measure sustainability... It offers stimulating food for thought for environmental educators and researchers.'
Environmental Education Research

'This book tells me, as an SI 'practitioner', where I have been and why, and more importantly how I should be thinking in order to effectively present to and empower the local community in the years ahead.'
David Ellis, Principal Pollution Monitoring Officer, Norwich City Council

'A practical guide to the development of sustainability indicators which offers a systemic and participative way to use them at local scale. Our preliminary results are highly positive and the approach is applicable in many contexts.'
Elisabeth Coudert, Programme Officer Prospective and Regional Development, Blue Plan

The groundbreaking first edition of Sustainability Indicators reviewed the development and value of sustainability indicators and discussed the advantage of taking a holistic and qualitative approach rather than focusing on strictly quantitative measures. In the new edition the authors bring the literature up to date and show that the basic requirement for a systemic approach is now well grounded in the evidence.

They examine the origins and development of Systemic Sustainability Analysis (SSA) as a theoretical approach to sustainability which has been developed in practice in a number of countries on an array of projects since the first edition. They look at how SSA has evolved into the practical approaches of Systemic Prospective Sustainability Analysis (SPSA) and IMAGINE, and, in particular, how a wide range of participatory methodologies have been adopted over the years. They also provide an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of projects that undertake work in the general field of sustainable development.

Sustainability Indicators: Measuring the Immeasurable? Review

The sustainability of business and economic activity has become a major issue for global business and for government at all levels. But there is no universally accepted definition of 'sustainability' and measurement of progress toward sustainability is still more art than science. What is measured, how it is measured, what range of indicators are appropriate, how one values the present in relation to the future and how one arrives at a final judgement where ecological, social and economic indicators move in different directions, are all matters of intense debate.This book, which is specifically identified as 'work in progress', makes a valuable contribution by teasing out the questions, alternative definitions and the underlying mental models that inform them. The authors list and discuss various approaches that have been taken to developing useful indicators.They then develop in some detail a systemic approach to developing sustainability indicators for a project, based on the idea of Systemic Sustainability Analysis (see key points below). Essentially, the method proposed is systemic, seeks to identify and encompass multiple perspectives and is developed for a specific purpose in measuring sustainability of a specific project or situation. While it is proposed as a method that has very general application, it emphatically is not a 'general theory' of sustainability - i.e. a set of rules and measures that can be applied to all situations. It will be interesting to see the successor, which is due to be published in May 2003.I suggest that the reader should go to Chapter 7 after reading the Foreword and before tackling the main text. It provides an excellent overview of the issues in dealing with indicators.My only disappointment is that there is no mention of The Natural Step, the body that uses an approach that seeks (in my opinion very successfully) to provide an approach that is systemic, offers 'simplicity without reductionism', and derives four broad parameters against which to judge movement toward or away from sustainability. There is also no mention of the 'triple bottom line', varieties of which have recently achieved popularity as a surrogate for measuring sustainability. I expect that will be covered in the succeeding book. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse | PermalinkComment Comment (1)

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